


Wolf's bane

by melian225



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: HPFT, Gen, Potions Accident, Werewolf Biology, lycanthropy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-25 15:27:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22298197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melian225/pseuds/melian225
Summary: What happens when a potion creation goes wrong (prompt: HPFT House Cup)? Quite a lot, as Damocles Belby finds out. Seems finding the right combinations for the Wolfsbane Potion is hard work.
Comments: 1





	Wolf's bane

It was really just like any other day. Damocles Belby wiped his brow with one exhausted hand and watched in horror as things fell to pieces around him.

Not literally pieces, at least not this time. Two weeks before he’d had to rebuild his whole lab when he’d discovered that mixing Basilisk venom and erumpet fluid resulted in an explosion. Or was it the presence of aconite that did it? He couldn’t really remember. All he knew right now was that armadillo bile mixed with dragon’s blood made the mixture bubble ominously and eat through his instruments. And if it did that to glass and metal, then he suspected it wouldn’t be very good on a person’s insides. Not even a werewolf’s.

He’d come up with the idea for a cure for lycanthropy two years ago, after seeing what happened to a distant cousin who had been unfortunate enough to have been bitten. Social ostracization, being rendered unemployable – it was patently unfair, especially given said cousin had done nothing to deserve such a punishment. He wondered at that, too, at society’s habit of blaming the victims of such things for what had happened to them. Like anyone would choose lycanthropy. It beggared belief.

Still, formulating a cure – or, at least, something that made life easier for these people – was much easier said than done. Damocles supposed that was why no one had attempted it. Then again, given the treatment of werewolves, probably no one had even thought of it. Or, on the off chance they had, bothered to try.

It was too late for Damocles’ cousin, too. Unable to cope with her situation, she had thrown herself off her broomstick at high altitude three months previously.

Shaking his head, he turned back to what was left of his instruments. He’d melted two phials today, and his best cauldron had a hole in it that even magic wouldn’t be able to fix. (He knew this because he’d tried. Repeatedly.)

“Guess this one’s a bust,” he muttered to himself. “Note to self: don’t mix armadillo bile with dragon’s blood without first modifying the properties of at least one of them.” He knew he would need both for his final potion; the issue was how to incorporate them.  
Vanishing the ruined items, he turned back to his workbench, cleaned off the mess, put a tray over the newly created hole in it, and took a deep breath. Time to try again.

“Right. I wonder whether, if I mix the armadillo bile with sopophorous bean first, if that will nullify the acidic effects of the bile and not cause it to eat through everything when I add the dragon’s blood?”


End file.
